The Fearful Joy (That Ever Slips Away So Quickly)
by devilisinthedetails
Summary: Jon and Thayet fall in love slowly.
1. Chapter 1

"The life so brief, the art so long in learning, the attempt so hard, the conquest so sharp, the fearful joy that ever slips away so quickly—by all this I mean love, which so sorely astounds my feeling with its wondrous operation that when I think on it I scare know whether I wake or sleep."—Geoffrey Chaucer

The Interest

It was a new and unpleasant feeling for Jon to not be happy to see his oldest and best friend, Gary of Naxen, walk into his private study, which, far from being a refuge from the pressures of ruling was where they were most intense since there was no need for pretense away from public scrutiny, because he knew that Gary wasn't meeting him as a friend, but as a Prime Minster.

"Let's start with the good news first." Jon pinched the bridge of his nose as Gary sank into an upholstered chair and settled a tower of documents on the gleaming mahogany table with a rustle. The rolls of parchment were precariously perched and on the verge of toppling over just like the realm Jon was now supposed to be ruling. Swallowing the hysteria that suddenly rose in his throat, because he would not descend into insanity as his father had, even if the prospect of riding off a cliff to escape the stresses of kingship sounded dangerously appealing at the moment, Jon added grimly, "Assuming there is any, of course."

"There is," Gary assured him, rummaging through the stack of scrolls. "I just have to dig a bit to find it. Ah, yes, we have received word of projected harvest yields from more fiefs today. The lords of Vikison Lake, Runnerspring, and Rosemark have all reported that they anticipate average crop yields."

The idea that average crop yields were considered good news rather than no news was just a bitter reminder that there was a famine in the realm. A famine he had caused when he held the earth together with the Dominion Jewel, the energy for that powerful magic feat sapped from the seeds planted by peasants who were probably currently cursing his name as they faced starvation.

"How many fiefs sent their anticipated crop yields to us today, Gary?" Jon clutched the arms of his chair so tightly that his knuckles turned white as polished ivory.

"Ten," answered Gary, who sounded as if he might have memorized the information. Perhaps he had. Ever since they were children, Gary had possessed an extraordinary memory for facts, figures, and details. "Five report projected yields fifteen percent lower than average, and two report an anticipated harvest ten percent less than usual."

"That means seven of ten fiefs are dealing with an impending famine." Shaking his head, Jon sighed. "That's not good news. Try again."

"Lord Imrah of Legann has sent word from Port Legann on the status of his negotiations with the Tyran bankers." Gary's forehead furrowed as he pulled out another piece of correspondence. "He writes that he has managed to drop their interest rate for the loan to the Crown from thirty-six percent to twenty percent…"

"Which is still extortion." Jon scowled.

"Bankers are sharks, Jon." Gary's tone was dark. "If they smell blood, they attack. Unfortunately, we do need their money if we hope to avoid a devastating precipitous drop in population due to famine, which obviously would not only damage the realm in the present but in the future. It can take years for a realm to recover from famine but even longer to recover from a marked decline in population. Population drives the economy and vice versa."

"I realize we need their money." Jon's scowl hardened into a full-fledged glower. "Worse still, they realize it, and that's why they are exploiting our desperation to charge such exorbitant interest rates."

"What are you suggesting?" Gary arched an eyebrow in a gesture that made him resemble his stern father too much for Jon's comfort. Maybe everybody was doomed to become their father, Jon thought and shivered despite the blazing fire in the hearth. "Should I instruct Lord Imrah to walk away from the negotiation table or threaten to do so?"

Jon paused to internally debate the merits of such strategies, and then, deciding for what felt like the hundredth time that day that he had no notion what to do, he replied crisply, "Lord Imrah is the great tactician, not me. Tell him to do whatever he deems necessary to lower the offered interest rate another five percent. Fifteen percent interest rate is ludicrously high but not outrageously so though mind you I have no idea how we'll pay back the interest without taking out more loans from somebody else, which might beggar the kingdom again."

"You're right but let's not worry about tomorrow's problems today." Gary, busy scribbling a note on Lord Imrah's letter, did not glance up at Jon. "Today has enough problems of its own without borrowing any from tomorrow."

"True." Jon massaged his throbbing temples. "We will be borrowing enough from the future without borrowing tomorrow's problems as well."

"Such wisdom, sire." For the first time that evening, there was a flicker of humor in Gary's chestnut eyes.

Needing a best friend more than a Prime Minister at that moment, Jon responded with a wry twist of his lips, "Believe it or not, Gary, I have been doing even deeper thinking than that."

"Ah, and what would be the subject of these exalted contemplations?" Gary chuckled, abandoning his papers as he focused his entire attention on Jon.

"Marriage." Jon leaned back in his chair, conjuring an image of Thayet in his head, because just thinking of her made a soothing warmth blossom in his chest. There was a woman born to be queen: poised, smart, and breathtakingly beautiful. The only question was if she would consent to being his queen. He still didn't know—and his ignorance both titillated and infuriated him—whether she agreed to dance, ride, and generally be in his presence because she had friendly or romantic feelings for him or if she was just being polite to the ruler of the kingdom where she had taken sanctuary.

"Marriage." A dreamy cast overcame Gary's brown gaze, and, without asking, Jon knew that Gary was reflecting on his new wife, Cythera, who already had the pink roses of her first pregnancy blooming in her cheeks though she had not yet started to show in any other fashion. "A marvelous institution. We are truly indebted to our ancestors for devising it…"

"I was hoping to discuss marriage to a particular woman, not marriage in general." Jon cut off Gary's mooning musing in favor of his own. "A king needs a queen. We should find one for me."

"I suppose we should start searching for a princess with the brain damage required to agree to marry you." Gary smirked as Jon rolled his eyes in a manner that was leagues away from regal. "I heard the most scurrilous rumors that one of the Gallan princesses was dropped on her head as a baby, Jon, so perhaps she is the perfect princess for you."

"Speaking of heads, I have the overwhelming urge to boil yours." Jon emitted an undignified snort, and then went on haughtily, "Not that you deserve to know, but I'm considering a princess from Sarain, not Galla."

"I know." Gary's demeanor was so smug that Jon battled the desire to throw a scroll at his snickering face. "The whole court knows, Jon. You haven't exactly been subtle in your interest in the charming Princess Thayet. Just order a ring made and propose to her already. You won't shock anyone, and this realm could use the excuse to celebrate that a royal wedding provides."

"We won't be able to afford a lavish party." Jon's lips thinned, because if the kingdom was reduced to borrowing money to feed its people, coins should not be wasted on elaborate weddings and feasts. He would not be the king who hosted grand celebrations while his people worried about their next meal.

"We will and we must." Gary's chin lifted in a way that announced more plainly than words that he would not back down. "It's a matter of state, where the people must see their king and queen strong and happy. There must be some grandeur and rejoicing even in times of struggle, because people need joy, and, more than that, they have to release the tension hard times create in ways we provide, or else they will do so in ways we cannot condone such as crime or even revolt."

"Fine." Jon was too tired to argue about being paraded in costume in front of the country again, and if Thayet was parading beside him as his queen that would make whatever ceremony the state demanded perfect. "Don't go planning the wedding yet. Remember the princess in question hasn't even consented to the marriage."


	2. Chapter 2

The Pursuit

"Riding side saddle again, I see." Buri shot Thayet a sidelong glance as Thayet gathered her silk dress—today a laurel green that she hoped would bring out the similar hues in her hazel eyes because her survival in this strange land was entirely dependent on her ability to be attractive to its still strange inhabitants—and graciously accepted a stable boy's proffered hand to mount her silver mare although she was confident that she could have done so without his assistance.

Deciding that Buri's snide comment did not technically require a response and did not deserve to be dignified with one, Thayet focused her attention on the stable boy instead. Smiling her thanks, she slipped a coin between his fingers as a token of her appreciation, earning her a low bow and murmured "Your Highness" from the starstruck stable lad.

Nudging her horse forward, Buri tossed a teasing look over her shoulder at Thayet. "Poor lad. He doesn't know that he's competing with a crowned king for your affections, and in the classic battle of king versus stable boy, king always wins."

"Keep your voice down." Thayet spurred her mare to a trot so that she could catch up to her too-bold friend. She looked about her at the collection of courtiers that Jon—the King of Tortall, Thayet reminded herself sternly because to fall into familiarity was dangerous—had invited on a picnic. Fortunately, most of the nobles appeared to entrenched in gossiping and scheming with their own companions to worry about what sort of scandalous things the savage K'miri outsiders were saying to one another. Thayet couldn't figure out if she should be grateful or resentful about that. "The king isn't interested in earning my affection. All I can offer him is a tenuous title that is lesser than his own. I can't even bring him a substantial dowry as one of his own nobles could, and he'll need gold out of his ears if the rumors of impending famine are true."

"I don't think he's interested in your title." Buri's smirk was wicked, and Thayet wondered how she had offended the Horse Lords so much that they gave her a friend who delighted in tormenting her. "You must know that, though, or you wouldn't be riding side saddle."

"I'm not trying to impress Jon by riding side saddle." Thayet gritted her teeth and clutched her reigns so tightly that her knuckles hurt in order to resist the urge to punch Buri on the nose.

"Of course not." Buri's tone was far too innocent to mean anything but trouble. "You're trying to impress his flock of preening peacocks."

"That has nothing to do with romance and everything to do with politics." Thayet shook her head briskly and tried not to think about the fact that the butterflies that sometimes took flight in her stomach when Jon's eyes, blue as the sky on a clear and crisp morning in the Sarain highlands, were definitely not political in origin. "You don't understand politics any better than your horse does, but it might do you well to realize that when we are taking refuge in a strange land, we have to adhere to their customs or they might decide that they don't want to suffer our presence any longer."

"With a princess and a king, it's never about romance and always about politics, I'm certain of that much." Buri snorted, sounding uncannily like her horse and Thayet bit back a laugh at the idea. "By the way, if you are such a political mastermind, I marvel that it hasn't occurred to you that if the king loves you, it doesn't matter what his nobles think of you. You will always be welcome in any country where the king is head over heels for you."

"Head over heels?" Thayet grinned, as amused as ever by Buri's blunt assessments of even the most exalted personages in Tortall. "You make him sound unbalanced, Buri."

"I'm not saying he's crazy as that Copper Island princess who went all homicidal maniac." Buri suddenly didn't sound as if she were joking, which was just as well, because Thayet knew it was too soon for anyone—even somebody as irreverent as Buri—to find humor in the horror that had transpired on coronation day. "But that resurrected cousin of his was definitely a terrifying lunatic. A strain of insanity could run in the Conte line."

"If his advisers are aware of my mother throwing herself from her tower, they will probably be whispering the same things in his ears about the taint of madness corrupting my blood." Thayet rubbed at her nose, as she always did when she was feeling self-conscious about herself and her K'miri ancestry. "They'll be saying that someone of my blood is not a fit consort for the King of Tortall."

"I have it on good authority from no less a person than the Commander of the King's Own that he is too headstrong to listen to his advisors." Buri arched an eyebrow. "Another way that he is like you. Neither of you recognize sense when you hear it."

"Ah, yes, you and Raoul of Goldenlake are founts of wisdom." Thayet's lips twisted ironically.

"Founts of wisdom?" A baritone that Thayet recognized with a start as the king's, and, before Thayet could blink, he was riding alongside her. "When do I have the pleasure of meeting these paragons?"

"That remains to be seen, Your Majesty." Thayet's cheeks burned like embers as she wondered how much of their conversation the king might have overheard. "When you meet them, though, they will probably explain to you that it is most ill-mannered to interrupt a conversation of which you are not a part."

"It would be even more uncouth for a host to fail to greet his honored guests." The king bowed to her and Buri, and the embers in Thayet's cheeks blazed into roaring flames. "It's a matter of precedent, Your Highness, and nobody understands precedent better than kings since we have to hear about it every day."

"This conversation is getting very boring." Buri rolled her eyes, and, to Thayet's relief, the king seemed entertained rather than offended by Buri's casual insolence. "People in love are always boring."

"That's the third time I've heard a variation of that remark today, Buri," commented Thayet, torn between amusement and irritation. "You know who is really boring? People who repeat the same complaints every day."

"Ouch." Buri whistled and kicked her horse forward, calling as she parted from them, "I can tell when I'm not wanted. I'll leave you two lovebirds to chip at each other in peace, or whatever boring things people in love do."

Thayet, abruptly too embarrassed to look at the king, stared after Buri as she joined a group of nobles that included Raoul of Goldenlake, one of the few Tortallans that Buri had developed respect and liking for, but she had to return her attention to the man beside her when he complimented her. "Your Highness, that green is stunning on you. It brings out your eyes in a most spectacular fashion."

"Does it?" Coyly Thayet widened her eyes because the king was the last person in Tortall that she would have told about the hour that she had wasted searching for the dress that perfectly emphasized her eyes. "I hadn't noticed, Your Majesty, but I had noticed that your robes match your eyes perfectly."

That wasn't too surprising, for the king, as he so often did, was wearing a rich blue that brought out the same shades in his gaze. The king knew what color suited him and was apparently determined to take advantage of it.

"Thank you." The king inclined his head to her. "You really don't have to call me 'Your Majesty' except at state occasions. I'd much prefer if you just said the far less fussy 'Jon.'"

"Very well, Jon." Her mouth curved into a smile that was just for him as she tried to remind herself that he was only Jon to her. "Then you must call me 'Thayet.'"

"You honor me, Thayet." Jon brought her hand to his lips for a kiss before Thayet could think to pull away—because even if he had done no more than kiss her fingers, they were still moving at too much of a breakneck pace for Thayet in this courtship she wasn't sure was a courtship and romance was the last thing she had been looking for as a refuge. Romance, especially for royalty, meant marriage, and marriage had caged her mother until she had jumped off that tower in the bravest deed she had ever done.


End file.
